I congratulate The National Center on Poverty Law for selecting two famous Americans to be their recipients of the National Award for Equal Justice in the year 2000 A.D. One has received the highest awards which our nation can bestow on any of its citizens! The other started as a Legal Services Lawyer & has gone on to serve our Nation in the Cabinet of The President of The United States. One is a Catholic priest, & the other had the Secret Service Code Name of Hanukkah Bush during the 1972 Presidential Campaign.
The first recipient is The Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, who was elected in 1952 President of Notre Dame University. His age was 35!
In 1953, one year after Hesburgh became a President I wasn’t even married, and I was only an Assistant General Manager of The Merchandise Mart in Chicago. So for my whole life I’ve been trying to catch up to him. Without success! Until today!
Now, today, I have my first chance to give him something he has never had before. It’s not a Presidency. He’s had that for 48 years. But it is the only National Award anywhere for Equal Justice.
Think of that! Equal Justice for everyone everywhere should have been a national, even an international objective, for thousands of years. But thanks be to almighty God, and to the United States of America, the first national program for equal justice for everyone everywhere came into existence here in the USA, just last year, here in Chicago!
No one deserves the award more than Father Theodore Hesburgh! I am profoundly honored to be the person chosen to bestow this award upon you, Father, a world famous & deeply beloved leader of our country in civil rights, higher education, and humanitarian service. Everyone knows he has been a success in all these most important areas of national life.
Our next award, which is completely equal I should emphasize to the first, is being bestowed upon a most energetic, farsighted, & courageous lawyer, an exemplary member of the legal profession, Mr. Mickey Kantor!
I first came in contact with Mickey when he was a lawyer in the National Legal Services Program for the Poor which I started as part of the War Against Poverty. It took vision & courage to take part in that War Against Poverty, but Mickey had & still has those qualities. Then Richard Nixon got elected President. He set out promptly to terminate everything in the War Against Poverty. But Mickey was totally opposed to Nixon’s attitude.
Almost independently he became director of a new movement to create “Action for Legal Rights.” He was a primary drafter of a new Legal Services Corporation. He got the Congress to pass national legislation authorizing a new Legal Services Corporation which even Nixon signed into law in 1974, for people in poverty.
Mickey has served as Secretary of Commerce and has received the William O. Douglas Award from the Constitutional Rights Association, The Thomas Jefferson Distinguished Public Service Award, the Albert Schweitzer Leadership Award & Elihu Root Distinguished Lecturer Award. Mickey is now a partner in the famous law firm, Mayer, Brown, & Platt. He is married to Heidi Schulman, & they have three children: Alix, Leslie, and Doug. He also has two grandchildren!
Obviously, I believe Mickey deserves the highest award of the National Center on Poverty Law. It is truly accurate to declare that Mickey Kantor was a genuine creator of Poverty Law for the poor people of our country.
